Answer Me
Nora Baroudjian | Translated by Tamar Marie Boyadjian
It is a warm summer day. It is afternoon. Someone in a wheelchair sits at the entrance to the garden.
I hastily return from a secluded corner, conversing on the phone. I feel this virile, lewd gaze upon me. Confused and angry, I know there is no escape, an insult is on its way.
“Mashallah, mashallah,” I hear.
I stand there, decisive, stern.
“Ayıp değil mi. You should be ashamed, Vartanoush,” I say in Turkish, a language taught to me by my grandmother from Hasanbeyli. With one eye squinted, she scrutinizes me with the other. There’s a smirk on her lips, a sort of pride because I’ve fallen for her game, just like a cat holding onto the tail of a mouse. And so she goes on, carelessly.
“Why would it be shameful? Güzele güzel demek ayıp mı. Is it wrong to say something beautiful is beautiful? Oh you really seem like a wonderful woman, you orospu, you whore.”
She’s always got an eye on everyone, especially the women, getting on their last nerve, running her mouth with indecent remarks. With her open eye, she savors their confusion. With her closed one, she disregards all their grace and charm.
She’s also exceedingly touchy, placing her hands on even the most intimate parts of women’s bodies. Though she’s in a wheelchair and the women may be quicker than she is, they still can’t evade her unwelcome touches. And if anyone even dares to complain, she simply mocks them.
“You’re all sluts.”
“Me, too?” I ask, hoping I’m different than the others.
“Aren’t you a woman? If I wasn’t nailed to this chair, I would show you.”
I stand there stupefied. Feeling resigned, I take a deep breath. “Oh, Vartanoush, Vartanoush. Are you a man or a woman?”
She slowly brings her hand to her forehead. As if she’s going to make the sign of the cross, she opens her palm instead. With her pinky finger facing her body, she draws an imaginary vertical line from her forehead down to her shins, dividing her body into two.
“This side is erkek, man. This side is woman.”
All of us women who work there already know how she is. We approach her with caution, aware that at any given moment she might unexpectedly and slowly move her hand up along one of our thighs. And when that happens and we suddenly jerk away in shock, she twists her face in a pleasing grin. If we unleash anger out at her, she simply laughs to herself and stares up in the air.
“Unrefined, shameless, immoral, filthy, pis, dirty woman.” She goes on and on, as if she doesn’t give a shit.
Her face is not exactly attractive. Her height, which is pretty impressive and probably stood out in her youth, now seems shorter amidst the anxieties of her past and her attempts to distance herself from it.
“Hey,” I say, “how did that husband of yours pick you to have babies with?”
“My husband was a really handsome man,” she replies. “May God rest his soul. He had such beautiful eyes—big, black. He was a good man. I was really in love with him.”
“A man like that married a woman like you?”
“I don’t know. It happened. We got married. He was older than me, and I did throw myself at him. My first daughter was conceived under a staircase. We weren’t married then.”
She describes everything in detail. And when I burst out laughing, a woman passing by exclaims, “What is it? Oh, she must be going off again about those merdivenler, those stairs.”
A newly hired, naive woman finds herself inevitably baptized by her behavior before the eyes of all the others. Bewildered and blushing in shock, she flounders, uncertain of where to flee especially as the veteran employees, showing little sympathy, inaugurate her into their ranks with a teasing “Welcome to the club” disguised as consolation.
Another woman’s cry echoes from the hall. Vartanoush is at it again.
It’s not just women who are revolted by her insufferable boldness. Men can hardly tolerate her dirty mouth. Throughout the day, she curses incessantly, and her hands freely wander over the curves of women’s bodies. With their sensibilities insulted, many of them change their seats at lunchtime just to avoid having their meal seasoned by her behavior.
“Don’t curse, Vartanoush. See, that person got flustered and ran away. If it’s not shame you fear, then at least fear God.”
“Allah mı? Onun gibi Allah sikim ben. God, you say? A God like that, I say fuck him.”
“Oh my goodness, Vartanoush.”
She won’t let you carry on. Even if she does, your words falter beneath hers, and if you manage to find them, they gallop away along with your complaints and self-worth, leaving you defenseless.
“Tell me. Where was that God of yours when the Turkish dogs skinned my father and took everything we had? Huh? Tell me. Where was that God?”
“Cevap ver bana. Answer me.”
“I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what to say.”
“Daha bana Allah diyor, git işine. Yet here you are still talking about God. Get back to work.”
We all get back to work.
One day:
“What’s the matter today, Vartanoush? Why are you sitting there with your lips tightly sealed?
She is in her usual spot in the hall, gazing out the window. There may be a hint of melancholy in her demeanor. It feels strange to me. She hesitates for a moment, as if weighing whether I am worthy of her confession. I can’t understand why she chooses to trust me, especially since I am the one who criticizes her the most.
“My son came to visit yesterday. He bought a house by the sea. I told him take me along so I could see it and congratulate him. He replied that it would be too much trouble to get me into a car, transport me there, and then bring me back. He said he would just show me the pictures instead.”
She looks at me, lost in contemplation.
“This is what he says to me. My son.”
“Did his words upset you?”
“I’m not that hard to move. He just didn’t want to do it.”
“You don’t need to be concerned, Vartanoush. Your son is truly exceptional. He visits you regularly and brings your favorite foods—he never leaves you wanting for anything. There are very few like him in this place. Your thoughts about him are unfair. I believe what he says is entirely reasonable.”
Who says that lying is a sin? When has the truth ever existed anyways, I think to myself.
She is still in deep thought. She takes her time before responding.
“May God bless you, my child. May he give to you according to your heart. May you receive nothing less than what you deserve.”
I believe that God doesn’t leave the prayers of those who have sinned against him unanswered. To lift her spirits, I suggest we go to my office. “Why don’t you come with me? Tell me more about your village.”
And so, she tells me.
She was born in the Ottoman Empire, in Karabacak, one of the villages of the province of Yozgat, which, at the turn of the twentieth century, was inhabited by Cherkess (Circassian) refugees fleeing from Russia. Theirs was the only Armenian family in the village. Their father, a farmer, and his four brothers served a Cherkess agha, a lord who protected her family of five sisters.
“They called us balta artığı, ‘the remnants of the axe.’ We were the only Armenians in the village, and they didn’t like us. The Cherkess and the Armenians didn’t talk to one another. We would fight each another—even the children. We would curse and brawl. My mother forbade us from leaving the house, but I would sneak out. They called me Erkek Fatma, ‘Fatma the boy.’”
At seventeen, Vartanoush left for Istanbul as a bride. She never got the chance to learn Armenian.
“Ermenice öğrenemedim,” she would repeat over and over, in a regretful manner. “I wasn’t able to learn Armenian.”
Something comes to her mind. Then, she would laugh out of nowhere. I insist she tell me. “I was a little girl, around nine or ten years old. One day, I secretly entered the mosque with a Circassian girl from the neighborhood. When the mullah began to chant, ‘la ilaha illallah,’ ‘there is no God but God,’ I let out a loud fart.”
I don’t know if it is that I don’t understand her or maybe I don’t believe her, but I make her tell me again.
“Yes. They threw me out of the mosque. I came home. My mother questioned me and I told her what happened. She got so angry, so furious, asking me what I was doing in their mosque. She tied me down and gave me a good spanking.”
As Vartanoush tells this story, she laughs at her own brave deed, then suddenly calms down.
“My mother looked like me, she was ugly. My father was a handsome man. One day they beat him up, calling him a gâvur, a ‘non-Muslim.’ They brought him in a carriage to the village, covered in blood… Oh, why are you reminding me of these things.”
She begins to cry. I let her. I don’t interfere. Everyone sees her as someone who only tells inappropriate stories, but her inner child appears before me at this moment. She is truly brave. Before long, she manages to gather herself, much like those who have long ceased to expect anything from life, often do.
“My grandfather was apparently a wealthy man, a merchant of camels. During the years of the Genocide, one of his camel herders, a Turk, slaughtered him so he could take his herd. So, hanım—you, mam, do you have any idea how many Armenians the Turks have massacred? Are you aware of these things?”
“I have some idea,” I say.
She starts cursing, turning her world upside down.
“I had two aunties, my mom’s sisters. During the Genocide, their husbands were murdered. They end up marrying Turks and converting to Islam. I never wanted to look at their faces. It was not even a couple years ago that those pezevenks, those fuckers, killed an Armenian gazeteci, a journalist. What was his name… oh, what was his name… I don’t remember, I forgot.”
“Hrant Dink. The name of that gazeteci was Hrant Dink.”
“Ah, yes, that’s it,” she says, dropping her legs to the ground in anger. “Daha bana Allah diyor. Yet here you are still talking about God.”
“Vartanoush, I want to write about you so others can know of your stories. What do you say?”
“Çok’ memnun olurum senden, I would be very happy if you did. May God’s blessing be upon you, my child. Away from evil, may your path be clear. I wish you health and longevity, also to your children, your family, and here, you—all of you.”
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Nora Baroudjian is an educator, journalist, and writer who earned her degree from the Department of Philology at Yerevan State University in Armenia. She began her professional journey in journalism as a member of the editorial teams for the Lebanese newspaper Zartonk and the Parisian newspaper Nor Harach. For the past 25 years, Baroudjian has dedicated herself to teaching the endangered Western Armenian language and Armenian history at the L’école Tebrotzassère in the outskirts of Paris. She is the founder of Dzidzernag, a platform that encourages youth to express themselves in Western Armenian, and has published Zero (Lousagn, 2022), a book of short stories and poetry.
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